


dear james

by redheadedwalker



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Letters, M/M, Memories, loss of reality, melancholia, overly vivid dreaming, sleeping issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1890396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redheadedwalker/pseuds/redheadedwalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of CA:TWS.</p>
<p>Suffering from insomnia and overly vivid dreams of Bucky, Steve started writing them down. Sometimes, when he lost his grip to reality, when the remains of his dreams felt too real, when waking up wasn't enough to vanquish the soft echo of sleep, Steve would write a letter. Forming words of long forgotten memories of a shared past, treasuring what was left of Bucky's presence, certain that he would be the only one to ever read them and remember.</p>
<p>Until one day the letters start to disappear; replaced by small notes in the handwriting of his long lost friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear james

{///~~~\\\\\\}

“ **A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasure of love.”**

-

Honoré de Balzac

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_Dreams are strange business._

At least that was what Sam had told him the one time Steve had tried to talk with him about the dreams that stole away his nights, leaving him painfully awake in the silence of darkness until morning peeks over the skyline of New York.

It was a clear and mild summer night in Brooklyn, when it happened again and Steve felt everything else than _strange_. Waking up in the middle of the night, because his dreams wouldn't let him have a solid night's sleep happened far too often to be strange anymore. Sam had told him that it would be just a _phase._ That it was a way how his mind was dealing with the recent events, a way to slowly process what happened, because his mind hadn't been prepared for such a _coincidental_ turn of events. The fact that Steve suffered from grave insomnia and unnaturally vivid dreams of Bucky ever since he woke up in the future wasn't just a _phase_. The fact that the dreams appeared in shorter periods of time and felt even more real since the Winter Soldier lost his mask that day on the bridge wasn't just _coincidental_.

Steve sighed deeply, his hands rubbing over his face and swiftly carding through his hair, before he stepped back from the window to close it quietly. The soft light from his bedside lamp shone invitingly through the door, but Steve decided to head for the kitchen instead, grabbing his notebook and a pen on his way.

He never really talked about his issues to anyone. Not even Sam knew the real extent of his his sleeping problems. Steve was aware that keeping his issues by himself like this wasn't the right way to deal with them, but he just was not ready yet to open himself, fearing what he would find.

Steve had tried to talk with Sam about Bucky, he really did, but his throat seemed to seize every time he tried to approach the issue, leaving them to remain in tense, desperate silence. But despite his reluctance to speak, Sam had met Steve's difficult situation with exceptional sympathy and insight. They had a mutual agreement that if the insomnia got worse or Steve finally would found the strength to speak, he would give Sam a quick call. Before Steve had left his flat though, Sam had given him one last, but nevertheless important advice, a way how to tame the roaring thunderstorm in his mind by himself.

_If you can't speak about your dreams, then write them down. It will help you to calm your nerves and take away some of the pressure on your mind. Trust me, Steve._

That was why Steve was now sitting in his small kitchen, a couple of blank sheets in front of him. Worrying the lid of his pen, he tried to focus on his last dream, searching for a point to begin.

It wasn't the first time Steve worked out his tangled thoughts and dreams based on Sam's suggestion. He had tried several ways of writing down what was haunting his thought, what left his mind confused and tense. Sometimes it was just a small note to himself, sometimes he wrote pages over pages, trying to sort out his furious stream of thoughts, to calm this riptide causing havoc in his mind.

This one was different though. On nights like this, when Steve's memory was exceptionally vivid, when waking up more felt like he was ripped out of another reality, when Bucky's presence still lingered heavily over Steve's senses long after he woke up, he would write it down in a letter to his lost friend.

It was not easy to find the right words, to describe the intense liveliness of what his mind projected. It was difficult to tame all those sensations dancing in his head, claiming every single minute of Steve's slumber and weave them into sentences. But it was worth the effort, worth the sleepless hours spent, because those dreams weren't just dedicated to Steve. They didn't belong just to him, at least not entirely.

They were memories, snippets of a shared past, pictures and sounds of Brooklyn, of hot days of summer spent under shady trees and nightly fights in some alleyway in New York. Memories of Bucky and himself, of shared smiles, gentle hands patching up each other, breathless laughter in the sun. Precious moments that needed to be treasured, needed to be remembered, even if Steve would the only own to ever read those letters again.

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_Dear Bucky,_

_I had a dream of us tonight again._

_It had been a rather quiet and mild summer day and you came back home unusually early that day. I don't know what you said exactly, because you weren't very fond of speaking, when you flopped yourself face first on the couch. But I think you mentioned something about being sent home to get some rest – to be honest, you already looked pretty tired, when you stood in the doorway._

_Though lying half asleep on the couch didn't keep you from lecturing me about how I couldn't perform any heavy work and how tight our money was and that you could work all day if it meant we could stay afloat. But seriously, you were asleep so fast, I barely could take a breath in between._

_But, believe it or not, I actually managed to drag you into bed or otherwise you would have woke up with a stiff neck. I didn't do much, actually, until you awakened, just when the day began to end and the setting sun bathed our small flat in warm light. It was fascinating to watch how the golden rays played with your dark strands, illuminating you sleep-mused hair like a halo. Your hair is very fascinating in descending sunlight, I could have stared at it for hours._

_You weren't really awake then, but I **must** have stared at you quite a while, because suddenly you shot me an amused smile, before dragging me onto your bed. You must have been asleep again fairly quickly, because my protests about how I could very well sleep on my own very drowned by your long, sleepy breaths._

_That night was the first one in a long time since neither of us woke up to cold sweat or my wheezing lungs, trying to catch a breath in the humid summer air. I wished we could do this again._

_Yours, Steve_

{///~~~\\\\\\}

The next morning was in a blur. It was fairly late when Steve had woken up in his bed again. His alarm had been turned off. Usually he would only cancel his regular timer, when he'd wake up earlier or after a dream in the middle of the night and the prospect of sleep was fairly impossible. Which happened basically every time. There were some rare times, when Steve couldn't stand the empty silence of his flat anymore and would go for a run and drop off on the couch once he would come back or when he read a book and fall asleep on the table, his face bedded on printed pages; but he never woke up in his bed again.

Steve remembered waking up from another of his far too real dreams and staying up to open a window. He also remembered closing it again after a while and walking into the kitchen to write yet another letter to Bucky, one of so many other he would probably never read. He knew that he finished it and usually he would place it inside the box on his bedside table, but when he unlocked it, the letter wasn't there. Maybe he had left it on the kitchen table? Probably.

It still didn't explain how Steve woke up in his bed again. Or when he changed his shirt during the night, because he was sure he put on his worn painting shirt before opening the window instead of the soft gray one he was wearing now. Stepping into he kitchen confused him even more. There was his pen, lying neatly atop a sheet of paper and his notebook. But when Steve moved around the table to pick up what must have been the missed letter, his lungs failed him the moment his eyes met the sentence written in hasty, but nonetheless neat handwriting.

_What is so fascinating about my hair?_

Steve could hear the blood rushing through his veins and felt how his lungs were begging for air, the longer he stared on the note, almost tiny on the otherwise blank sheet of paper. The note in front of him wasn't his letter, it was a _response_. He knew that it could be a trap, that someone else could have written it to set Steve on the wrong track. But there was something that told him that it really had been Bucky who left him the message, who took the letter with him, who handled him – fast asleep – back into bed with a comfier shirt. If it would have been the Winter Soldier who found him that night, Steve would certainly be dead by now.

There was something oddly intimate about the whole incident, leaving Steve stroking tenderly over the small black letter, like they would disappear again every second. It had an oddly calming effect imagining Bucky reading Steve's letter, a small smile on his lips – or was it a confused frown? - when he pocketed it and wrote down his response. Steve felt a distant buzz rummaging in the back of his mind, radiating panic and shooting questions. _Why now? Who did you find me? How are you? Do you remember anything? What happenened to you?_

Steve hadn't noticed that he was crying. Crisp words were suddenly blurry and distant and there was something wet dripping on his collarbone. With a quick move he wiped away the tears and took a deep, shaky breath, before focusing on the note again. His mind was still screaming desperately, but Steve managed to shut out most of it, when he reached for his pen and ripped another page from his notebook. He would take the risk and trust his heart to find the right words.

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_Your hair is very beautiful: How the sunlight is intertwining with your dark strands and gives them a honey-colored touch. The soft look of your natural waves when you wake up the morning after you had a bath. The unique mixture of almost black, chocolate and light brown strands that makes your hair so mesmerizing._

_I'm an artist, Bucky, it's my job to sift out the hidden beauty of things, as plain and small as they may seem to the casual observer._

{///~~~\\\\\\}

When Steve came back home from the small supermarket across the street, carrying two paper bags on his arms, he noticed that there was something different in his flat that wasn't there merely an hour ago. The apartment was empty and quiet, but there was a faint presence lingering in the air like a reminder that someone had been there not long ago. Aware that there still could be something or someone potentially dangerous inside the walls of his home, Steve cautiously stepped into the kitchen to retrieve his shield from where he hid it beside the fridge when he would go out.

But the moment he was in front of his table, Steve let out the breath he didn't know he was holding. The person that was been inside his flat just minutes ago had disappeared again – and left a note in familiar handwriting.

_Show me._

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_You are really talented. Tell me more about our past._

It had been almost a month since Steve found Bucky's second message on his kitchen table. That night he had drawn the Bucky, exactly how he remembered him from his last dream and left the drawing on the kitchen table; with several sheets of paper and a pen, just in case. On the next morning the picture was gone, replaced by another short note in that tiny handwriting.

Ever since then Steve had told him stories of their past, sometimes just brief snippets of their ordinary day, sometimes long tales about particular events. Sometimes Bucky would ask a question and Steve would give his best to answer every single one of them. Sometimes drew him little pictures instead of just describing what he wanted to show.

That was what kept him going from day to day: Waiting that his own notes would disappear and be replaced by Bucky's neat script. But it wasn't just the anticipation that kept Steve occupied, it was the blissful warmth his mind seemed to radiate ever since Bucky's first response appeared in Steve's kitchen.

His dreams remained, even more alive than anytime before, but Steve finally could sleep without the apprehension of waking up randomly in the middle of the night, because his dreams stole away his energy to drop off again. There was something fatally solid that kept his feet on the ground, the evidence that Bucky was really _here_. Steve's fear of losing his grasp of reality, of not being able to distinguish which side of his mind was the real one, of losing himself inside this golden fantasy of the past he would never relive again was what had kept him awake at night. Being lost in a future without anyone to rely on had triggered Steve's dreams and insomnia, but it was the Winter Soldier that made him realize exactly _how_ lost he still was. Bucky had been a victim of time, wiped again and again because he remembered a past he hadn't the right to rely on. His best friend wasn't the man he knew anymore that day on the bridge. The Winter Soldier seemed to have evaporated the last bit of what had been left of Bucky. But even the cruelest machine needed something inside to function properly. Bucky had been in there, Steve had seen the recognition in his eyes, the turmoil in his head, how the Winter Soldier tried to fight against the strange feeling of familiarity that Bucky projected.

It was this slow remembrance in his words, the way Bucky spoke to him through those written messages that was giving Steve hope that maybe, _maybe_ they could happen again. But this easy hope wouldn't last forever.

{///~~~\\\\\\}

**One week later**

<\--->

_I dreamt of you last night._

_It was a late day in spring and we went to the park, because the sun was standing high and we wanted to take the chance and enjoy at least a couple of hours outside. It was ordinary, nothing special, when we lay there under the trees, so you wouldn't burn your nose. We both dozed of once or twice. Nothing unusual. Then my dream changed._

_It was strange._

_You were asking me something and my breath was suddenly caught in my lungs. Your blue eyes were shining so bright and the smile on your face could measure with the sun itself. My heart was suddenly beating faster and there was a pleasant sensation in my stomach._

_I remember this feeling. I remember it from when I read your letters and notes, because you seemed to feel the same._

_Were we in love?_

_Bucky_

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_I don't know whether or not you were in love with me._

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_Where you?_

{///~~~\\\\\\}

_Yes._

{///~~~\\\\\\}

There was another message, locked away safely inside the box on Steve's bedside table, the one he intended to leave on the kitchen table, the one that spoke directly from his heart.

_I'm still in love with you, Bucky._

When Steve woke up the next morning to the sounds of Brooklyn's slow awakening, the box and the key had disappeared from his nightstand.

{///~~~\\\\\\}

**Two weeks later.**

<\--->

The vibrant sensation of waking up from a strange dream was still buzzing through his limbs, when Steve quickly sat up to calm down his erratic breaths. Tiny red numbers slowly became clear to his blurry sight – 2:34 a.m. – promising another restless night spent in solitude.

Two weeks.

Fourteen – no – fifteen days since Steve had locked away his heart in that box forever. Fourteen nights since Bucky had stolen his most painful secret, exposed on countless pages, immortalized in pencil and ink. Twenty-seven days spent anxiously waiting for any kind of response.

The red shine from on Steve’s clock dimly illuminated the edge of his linen sheets; distorted and oddly cold. His knuckles were prominent against the papery white skin of his hands where they clutched the damp linen like a lifeline. Steve almost wondered what would give in first, before he closed his eyes again.

Apparently it was his sanity that left him right then, leaving his mind hallucinating like crazy, projecting what Steve’s heart craved so badly: The cold touch of metal digits slowly drawing circles over the back of his hand. The brush of warm fingers against his cheekbones. The brief tickle of too long hair against his collarbone. Even the familiar scent of wood and sun and something that was so distinctively Bucky.

It was ironically nostalgic how Steve’s breathing failed him then; a beautifully sad reminder of what will never be again.

“Breathe.”

A quiet sob left Steve’s clogged up throat and he felt hands wandering up his neck, both cold and warm, drawing circles from his chin to his cheekbones and back again. His jaw tightened and Steve squeezed his eyes shut even more, avoiding the hollow darkness of his bedroom and therefore the end of his mind’s foolishly selfish fantasy.

“Look at me.”

The desire to give in to the soft imaginary voice vanquished the fear of losing the ghostly thin whiff of Bucky his mind projected so heavily. What Steve didn’t expect was the pair of bright concerned blue eyes searching for his own.

“Bucky-“

Merely a breath. Silence. One hand retreating – the metal one. The sound of cotton shuffling against linen.

“I just wanted to return this.”

A small brown box. _The_ small brown box.

Steve’s breath hitched and he watched how Bucky’s hand gently placed it back on the nightstand. Watched how his silvery fingers were slowly sliding through his own, strangely warm and reassuring.

“I’ve missed you.”

Silence. The low creek of the bed frame where the mattress dipped from the new unfamiliar weight, when Bucky slowly came closer. The soft brush where he exhaled softly against Steve’s skin.

“I know.”

Suddenly everything came back in a rush. Steve’s dream, the fear of losing Bucky forever, just because he couldn’t stop his feelings from breaking out, because he couldn't stop the walls around his oldest secret had crumbled down from age and the violent power of his beaten heart. Suddenly Steve's blood was rushing too fast through his veins, his mind was roaring like a hurricane and his lungs burned like a wildfire.

“Please don’t leave, I-”

“I will not.”

The response was quick, but solid nonetheless. Steve could see the deep sincerity in Bucky’s eyes, tinged with desperate need for recognition and something he didn’t dare to name. Instead of delving deeper, afraid of what he might find, Steve closed his eyes again and took a deep breath, before gently leaning his forehead against Bucky’s.

“Promise?”

Steve’s voice wasn't more than a quiet whisper, afraid of what might happen, afraid that Bucky would reject him. Instead Steve felt Bucky shifting closer until their noses softly brushed against each other; the soft response echoing on his skin.

“Promise.”

{///~~~\\\\\\}


End file.
